There is a shocking fact that few people in Scotland or elsewhere know which is just as disgraceful as the 30 year Westminster administration and deceit over Scotland’s oil. This is the as-yet unexplained and secret action by Westminster Order in 1999 to move Scotland’s marine boundary from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Carnoustie. To this day this lost Scotland 6,000 square miles of the North Sea, nodded through at the time by the feckless and treacherous Lib/Lab arm of Westminster based in Holyrood.

The shocking thing about this secret order is that it was not openly discussed in the Commons, passed by the house of Lords and then passed by a very select Labour and Liberal committee in the Scottish Office.

One wonders if, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the First of Scotland, knew how undemocratic this order was before she signed it ??

Sign our e-petiton to revoke the 1999 order that made 6,000 sq miles of Scottish sea and sea bed English. Alternatively support our facebook cause.

HENRY McLEISH has been revealed as
the man who ''quietly moved'' England's North
Sea fisheries boundary 60 miles north.

The SNP and Liberal Democrats last
night joined fishing leaders in calling on First Minister Donald Dewar to
explain why McLeish gave away Scotland's legal rights to 6000
square miles of prime fishing waters to the
English.

Gordon Wilson, an SNP candidate in
the forthcoming European elections, claims the alteration to the fisheries
boundary is ''strategic'' in nature and sets a dangerous legal precedent.

Wilson is holding
a conference in Aberdeen tomorrow to express outrage at the
move which he says amounts to the English ''robbing us of our
waters''.

Wilson added: ''If it had been land rather
than water which had been robbed in such a fashion there would have been an
uproar.

''This carve-up has been done under
the guise of devolution and it is a threat to our rights under Scots law.
Scottish fishermen fish between 80-85% of the waters which are affected and are
now suddenly subject to English law.

''This area has been removed from
Scottish jurisdiction ... it is a dangerous
precedent.''

Wilson said he was
investigating whether the boundary shift would affect ''other activities'', such
as oil and mineral exploration which take place inside the marine
area.

LibDem Euro candidate Robert
Aldridge said he was ''very concerned'' about how the alteration to the boundary
''had come about''.

''It has been quietly done and seems
to have bypassed any democratic process,'' he said. ''It has broader
implications for democracy which are quite
worrying.

''We will be pressing to have this
looked at again with a public examination of the reasons for the boundary change
which has been implemented.''

The former boundary between English
and Scottish waters ran due east from Berwick to a median line between the
UK and Norway. But a
new ''demarcated'' limit has been created 60 miles further north at Carnoustie.
The new boundary has been drawn up under international maritime regulations to
identify a zone within British fishery limits for which Scottish ministers will
be responsible in the future. The boundary shift was established by an order
carried out at Westminster under the Scottish Adjacent
Boundaries Order (1999).

The order was passed by the House of
Lords and the Committee on Delegated Legislation on March 23, but was not openly
debated in the Commons.

It was moved by McLeish - then a
Scottish Office minister and now a senior member of the Scottish Cabinet - and
reportedly received minimal opposition from a committee containing three other
Scottish MPs - Tam Dalyell, Sir Robert Smith and John
McAllion.

A Scottish Office spokesman said the
change in the fishing boundary - which did not come to light until early last
week - was necessary as a result of Scottish devolution. However, the spokesman
could not explain the constitutional logic of the boundary
alteration.

The spokesman said the area, which
now comes under English limits, would be policed by Ministry of Agriculture,
Fisheries and Food protection vessels rather than the Scottish Fishery
Protection Agency.

Hamish Morrison, the Scottish
Fishermen's Federation chief executive, said that although the boundaries became
law a month ago, the federation had not been informed about the decision and
there had been no effort made by the government to consult with the organisation
on the matter.

A Scottish Office spokesman last
night defended the controversial boundary changes, claiming that ''full and
proper parliamentary procedures were followed''.

WHEN will the people of Scotland
wake up to the fact that for the past couple of centuries Scotland has been, and
is being, demeaned and vandalised at the hands of our nearest
neighbour?

Currently, we are likely to become a
massive windfarm, although recently Sir Donald Miller, former chairman of
Scottish Power, made a scathing public attack on the creation of windfarms,
likening them to subsidy farming that would cost the customer up to four times
that of other types of bulk power.

The costs of providing stand-by
backup to cope with sudden reductions in output would be passed to the consumer,
not the windfarm developer, and where will the power go? Small local and
domestic turbines are attractive;

mass development is
not.

Now, for nuclear dumping,
Scotland has six of the 12 sites most
likely to be favoured for long-term use, despite the population balance of one
to 10 and without Holyrood input.

In 1999, Scotland's marine boundary was shifted for some
unexplained reason from Berwick to Carnoustie, about 6000 square miles of the
North Sea becoming English. We are also the
location of choice for the UK's nuclear defence capabilities. On
June 11 you report that a fisherman has been fined in England for fishing in Scotland.

Scotland will lose
about pounds -20m from lottery awards if the London Olympic bid is successful and a special
lottery fund is dedicated to that.

Scotland alone is
supposed to pay for the building of the Holyrood parliament, despite the fact
that over the years Scots have contributed their share of the building of
Westminster, London government buildings and whatever else Westminster chose to build
in the pampered south-east. We no doubt had a share in the creation and
maintenance of the ridiculous and extravagant Dome
[pictured].

We are all used to the fact that
Britain, the
United Kingdom and
England are all synonymous. The
Barnett formula, supposed by the English to give Scotland unfair fiscal
advantage, though disputed, is under threat and our partner in a so called
"union of equality" has devoured our rightful inheritance of oil
revenues.

When one wishes to subscribe to a
site on the internet and has to insert one's address including country of
residence one is faced with a list of 238 countries, some unheard of, tiny and
remote, and no mention of Scotland.

It matters not a jot whether one's
personal political standpoint is hard right or hard left or anywhere in the
middle - achieve independence, repatriate our Scottish senior politicians from
Westminster to
Holyrood and let us for once have our country to ourselves and be in charge of
our own affairs. This would also allow the English to have their very own
parliament, which Westminster more or less
already is, without the need to trouble themselves with us, and it would also
avoid the West Lothian
question.

The SNP should gain massive popular
support to achieve independence and then we can all split up into the usual
political divisions in Holyrood. Independent, we can stand on the right or left
of the political spectrum in normal, untrammelled political debate about
Scotland and her future in the wider
world.

I apologise for this undiluted
whinge and have no wish to be categorised as a sad complainer. When these items
are seen in isolation they are ignored, but if they can be catalogued a little,
and I have missed out many in writing this, it may bring people to realise just
what is going on. It takes scant account of 300 years of history, which could
provide many, many further instances just as shocking as the
above.

Nigel Dewar Gibb

Westminster English/Scottish
political establishment is conning Scotland and the Scots

DOUGLAS Fraser reports (July 28)
that Andy Kerr MSP, in his introductory speech for the Scottish Labour Party
leadership campaign, apparently says that Alex Salmond wants to use fear to
"shatter Scots' confidence". He goes on to say: "Mr Salmond wants Scots to
believe the English are conning us, stealing from us. He (Mr Salmond) ignores
all that unites us as he tries to create division."

The atmosphere in
Scotland is palpably more
optimistic and less fearful about the future under the SNP government in
Holyrood than it has ever been under the control of Westminster or the Lib/Lab
coalition at Holyrood and their wasted nine years. As for being conned, it
didn't need Alex Salmond to make everyone in Scotland believe
that they are being conned. The infamous deceit over North Sea oil, with
Scottish and English politicians conspiring to hide the true position from
Scotland and top-level cabinet
pretence that it would never amount to much, is a good starting
point.

Equally shocking is the as yet
unexplained and largely secret and unknown move of Scotland's marine boundary from Berwick to
Carnoustie, losing Scotland
6000 square miles of the North Sea, proposed by Westminster in 1999 and nodded through by the
treacherous Lib/Lab coalition in Holyrood - refusing a debate. The suspicious
reasons behind this move, requested under the Freedom of Information Act, have
been denied to the SNP government as "it would not be in the public interest".
Whose public interest do they refer to? One can only hazard a guess at what that
means. Admittedly, it is only the fishing boundary that has been moved so far,
but expert legal opinion declared the move illegal on three grounds and it is
widely felt that it is "a likely marker for oil and gas" in the
future.

The other union, the EU, also
comprises many nation states. Can anyone seriously consider, say, the French who
currently hold the presidency, proposing to move the Belgian, Spanish, German or
any other member state's marine boundary without a
revolt?

Taking only these two matters into
account, I think it may be fairly said that, even without the illegal
Iraq war (that
Scotland in general opposed),
the Westminster English/Scottish political establishment is undeniably conning
Scotland and the Scots. There have
been many other instances over the troubled 300 years of the now disintegrating
Union.

Interesting that in the same edition
of The Herald, a full page is devoted to the success of Gigha and the
improvements there after only six years of independence. This, I suggest, is a
likely marker for an independent Scotland that is coming in the near
future.

Nigel Dewar Gibb

LABOUR'S collapse in by-elections,
most recently in Glasgow East, shows what little confidence the British public
now have in the party. The roots of this distrust can be traced back to the
Iraq war, when it took catastrophic
decisions against the public will, and then became mired in a morass of lies,
misinformation and skulduggery. That was when Labour truly lost its moral
authority.

Its social-democratic standing has
been further devalued by obsequious deferral to big business, utter failure to
bring forward a coherent energy policy, contradictory behaviour over the
environment and global warming, plans for new nuclear submarines and excessive
use of PPP financing.

Tony Blair, the consummate political
tap-dancer, was able to finesse these failures with the public through one more
election, as long as other things in the economy went well. However, Gordon
Brown now has to contend with an inhospitable economic climate, without a stock
of public trust to draw on. Easy meat, even for an SNP which offers no more than
rhetoric, an assorted jumble of opportunistic policies and a growing track
record of broken promises.

Socialism is nothing if not a moral
crusade. Taking us into Iraq was an unethical act of betrayal
which will not be forgotten or forgiven by the electorate until the perpetrators
(including Mr Brown and Jack Straw) have left the leadership and Labour's moral
credibility is repaired. It is now time for Labour, in Scotland and
UK-wide, to go off quietly into the wilderness and rediscover its soul and its
purpose.

Comment - David Henderson

GORDON Brown claims he can "feel our
pain" during this period of financial hardship. Anybody who can put the cost of
the TV licence for his second home on his expenses has not the foggiest idea
what he is taking about.

Comment - Maggie Jamieson

If you think this is shocking do the following

Blog and tell the World of this, an example of the lengths that the, feckless and treacherous Liberal / Labour arm of Westminster based in Holyrood are prepared to go to get their hands on other peoples oil.

In 1999 England made 6,000 miles of Scotland's Sea, English !
Tell everyone you know to tell everyone they know

The North Sea on Scotland's East Coast upto Carnoustie past St Andrews has been stolen by Westminster in 1999. This 6,000 miles of North Sea between Berwick-upon-Tweed the legal Marine boundary to Carnoustie now belongs to England, this means the pipeline into Grangemouth is in Englisg Waters